


Supercut

by scarletjuliet



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst, Custody Arrangements, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Not A Happy Ending, Or lack thereof?, Phone Calls & Telephones, Post-Break Up, mentions of Veronica Tetzlaff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 23:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17877119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletjuliet/pseuds/scarletjuliet
Summary: Roger didn’t usually feel this way, but there was something about John’s carefully civil voice down the phone that made the mansion seem far too big. He ran one calloused palm along the smooth surface of the kitchen bench. “Hi, John, it’s Roger.”It's been a rough break up, and Roger hasn't seen the children he's helped raise for over a month now.





	Supercut

**Author's Note:**

> Am I capable of writing anything that isn't angst? (Futhermore, am I capable of writing anything that isn't a oneshot? Honestly, this could have been so much more but all I could visualise was this one conversation so I decided not to push itttt... I do struggle with longer projects.)
> 
> The title is inspired by Lorde's [SuperCut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDzfWzORry8), though the fic itself isn't. If you google the word you may struggle to understand why I chose it, but if you listen to the song I think you'll get it!

...

 

“Hello. John Deacon speaking.”

 

Roger didn’t usually feel this way, but there was something about John’s carefully civil voice down the phone that made the mansion seem far too big. He ran one calloused palm along the smooth surface of the kitchen bench. “Hi, John, it’s Roger.”

 

“Oh. Yes. Hello.” said John, voice stiffening with an additional layer of politeness. Roger swallowed. His chest felt just slightly too tight. When he didn’t say anything, John added a, “How can I help you?”

 

The question was not one that invited pleasantries. Still, Roger attempted to keep his voice light when he answered with yet another, and probably unwelcome, question. “How are the kids?”

 

Silence. And then, “Fine, Roger. They’re good.”

 

Five years. That was how long John had lived here. Roger let his eyes trace the kitchen sink filled with empty glasses and plates, past the coffee pot and to the door, where he could see kitsch blankets draped over couches and a shelf filled with too many books for him to ever manage to get around to reading. It made his heart stutter to think of everything he couldn’t see. But no wonder the place felt so big. He was struggling to fill it alone.

 

“Good,” was what Roger also said, drumming up some courage with two fingers on the bench, “I. Yeah, I was actually calling to see if maybe I could, take them out for a day?”

 

The absence of John’s voice had something in Roger spiralling into panic, and so he continued filling the void: “Just see them, you know? Maybe they could come around. It’s been a while.”

 

He couldn’t have given an exact amount of time, not even in his mind. Probably a month, he wasn’t entirely sure. Time had been escaping him for a while. Maybe since _The Works_ , the tour’s end, when it had all come undone. He was determined, though, to re-stitch what he could. There was a shuddering hope in his veins, his whole body pulsing in anticipation, as he waited for the response.

 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

 

Roger exhaled, running his free hand through his hair. “Okay. Um,” and then, very gently, “Why?”

 

“Just isn’t.”

 

“Is it Veronica?” Roger asked, without thought. Breathed in, sharply. John didn’t reply for a while. He wondered briefly if maybe she was nearby, listening over the phone call, but stopped when his stomach turned at the thought.

 

“No, it’s not Ronnie.” was John’s eventual, neat response.

 

Roger swayed slightly in place, swallowing and repositioning the phone against his ear. There was something burning in his fingers and he felt palpitations as he spoke. “They’re my children too.”

 

“They are _not_ your children, Roger.”

 

Roger felt a real, physical pain within him. _Oh._ He wasn’t sure he remembered ever feeling anything quite like that before. His heart seemed to have dropped a small way and been suddenly caught by a tight, cold hand in his chest. The walls of his ribcage juddered. He could feel hypothermia setting in.

 

What he _could_ remember were late, sticky orange nights. Pools of warmth he and John had created under their duvet. The soft noises they’d made, discussion of their shared day, John’s shimmering pond eyes and his kiss-reddened lips, _You’re so good with them Roger, they love you, I love y_

 

“They _are_ ,” Roger breathed, desperately, “You said—”

 

He paused. Stuttering to a halt, the cold spreading. But had John said? Maybe Roger had invented that, just like he’d invented the candlelight in the bedroom and the lily pads in John’s irises. He stuck an index finger in his right eye, twisting to clear it from sleep. Running it absently over a furrowed brow. “You said… that they were mine.”

 

But by the time it was out of his mouth, it was more like a question. There was silence down the line. Roger didn’t feel like it was his heart that was pounding, rather that the kitchen was what was pulsating around him. Finally, there was a crackly sigh, and the tired words.

 

“You said you were mine, too, Roger.”

 

There was a blizzard inside Roger. He braced himself with an elbow on the bench. Listened to John’s voice again:

 

“But we all say things we don’t really mean.”

 

Roger let his head tilt forward, slightly. Now his body was a lake frozen over, cracking under the weight of John’s words. The statement was a supercut, the real heaviness of the words from the bulk that underpinned it. The way she had looked at him, amongst the crowd, amber through the bottom of his glass. It had been a rough, jagged week. They were on tour. He and John hadn’t been speaking. God, he had just wanted to remember what it felt like.

 

 _Soft noises. Orange nights. Pond eyes._ “John…”

 

John’s lips, drawn into a hard line. That spanning, canyon deep silence that had been so much more painful than the screaming Roger had for some reason anticipated. The empty space on the bed, the filling suitcase on the floor. The calls from the kids that had just stopped coming.

 

_Soft noises. Orange n_

 

“Is that all, Roger?” John asked, impatient.

 

“Are you and Veronica having sex?”

 

There was silence. Roger bit his own lip, hard, as if in punishment. He could hear John inhale down the line, a breath so steep Roger felt nausea rise from somewhere within him, as though he was standing on the edge of it’s precipice and looking down.

 

“Roger, I’m hanging up now.”

 

“No! John, Deaks, wait, I’m sorry,” Roger blurted, stumbling, desperate, “That came out really badly. I didn’t mean it like that.”

 

More silence. The nausea doubled as Roger waited for the sickening, hanging-up click. _Didn’t mean it like what?_ Roger asked himself in the meanwhile.

 

“We’re working things out.” John finally said.

 

Once the quiet afterwards had stretched long enough for Roger to realise that was all he was getting, he ran his tongue over his throbbing bottom lip. Shifted to rest his other elbow on the counter. “I’m… glad things are going well for you,” he said softly.

 

He was lying. He was an awful person for the truth, he knew. But plucked from Roger’s soil, he would rather have John wilt and die. _Love is not possession, they said._ He needed John. John needed him once, too. And the kids, the kids needed him, they were _his_ kids—

 

“I never said that,” said John.

 

“John,” said Roger, “I want to see them. They must miss me. Do they miss me?”

 

Backstage, little hands pulling at his sweaty hair. Big blinking eyes, green pools just like John’s. The unskilled thwack thwack of a drumstick on his thigh. The sleepy weight on each of his hips, the warmth in his arms. The vanilla ice cream on his chin, the sick down his back. His tongue stumbling over nonsense words in picture books. Weekly goodbye hugs. Little faces filled with anger or adoration, screwed up with tears or with laughter. Roger’s own face began to screw up.

 

“No, they don’t.” John said.

 

Roger trembled. “You’re lying.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

Roger squeezed his eyes shut. “John Deacon, you are lying to me.” It was a command, a wish. Roger had never wished for something more in his entire life. “John?” He said, louder, when he got no response.

 

“They don’t miss you, Roger. _I_ don’t miss y—”

 

John’s careful voice cracked, right at the end. Roger heard himself sob, once, an ugly noise like a heavy oak door creaking shut. His arms were shaking as he clapped his free hand over his mouth, but he felt very, very far away. He was absolutely certain he couldn’t say anything without making the noise again, so he waited for John’s voice in his ear.

 

An inhale. Shakier this time. “Are we done here, Roger?”

 

Roger’s skull was filled with fluid. Something bitter and sloshing, like beer. “John, I love you.”

 

A sharp inhale. “Roger, please don’t—”

 

“I love you,” Roger repeated, quivering. “I love you so much. I can’t—”

 

“Roger—”

 

“And I love _them_. Deaky, please, just _listen_ —”

 

When the line went dead, Roger didn’t even have the words left to curse. All he had were the ugly noises and the fluid pooling in his eyes, and the spluttering and the shaking hands pressing his face all over as if maybe that way it could all be kept inside.

 

Roger crouched over and coughed and hacked till he could feel the tears bleeding into saliva running down his chin, and he felt everything he had already lost being torn out of his body again. All the while behind his eyes rolled the supercut, over and over, the candles that hadn’t been there but the warmth that _had_ and the way in his heart his blood had trembled.

 

It never ended. He sat on the kitchen floor, and shivered and shivered.

 

...

**Author's Note:**

> (I don't think I've ever watched a soap opera but I meannnn)  
> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
